Do not book with this company!!!
I booked a weekend at a rental property of theirs on Homeaway.com. After the initial booking, I was informed that the cost for the weekend would actually be $400 more because "the owner would not accept that rate in the off season". Which doesn't make sense since it's the off-season and she is making money on renting out her home for a weekend. I went ahead with the booking anyway since my family needed a place to stay for a family wedding.
I received an email the week leading up to our stay with check-in instructions, and a section that said "Check Out Instructions" with nothing there. After researching through old emails, I came across the contract and made sure we followed what was expected of us. We made sure the house was nice and clean (cleaner than when we even checked in), made the beds with the comforters and pillows, and took all the linens and towels and piled them in the hamper in the laundry room. We checked out before our 10am checkout (since it was made clear there would be NO late checkouts).
A few days later, I received notice that $225 of our $1000 security deposit was being withheld because we "used the linens and didn't wash them ourselves". I went back through the paperwork and responded to Style Vacation Homes that there was nothing stating we had to clean the linens ourselves. They responded back that there was a note posted where the linens were kept. I let them know that out of the 13 people who stayed there, not one person saw any note. It also had said linens were provided on the booking page.
After 5 days with no response, I messaged Style Vacation Homes again asking if there was someone I could speak to about this before leaving a review. Later that day, Louis Shaw, the owner of SVH called to speak to me about the linens. He said the owner was upset because she ended up spending 5 hours doing the linens herself before her family came into town to stay. I told him, if it were CLEARLY stated somewhere that the linens needed to be cleaned, we would have done so. Even if it meant us getting up BEFORE 5am to start since we were forced to checkout no later than 10am and apparently it would have also taken us 5 hours to clean them. I stated we made sure the house was in excellent condition and he said, "the owner did say the house was left perfectly cleaned." He said he told the owner "let's give them back the $225 and we can use this as a learning experience". I thanked him for the understanding and mentioned I think it would have been extremely helpful to have a Welcome Binder with this type of information for guests so there isn't any confusion in the future. I also told him I would mention how professionally this was handled in my review on Homeaway.com. We ended our conversation talking about other rental properties and what I thought was on good terms.
I left my thorough review (4/5 on Homeaway) and said how there was some confusion about check-out, but it was handled professionally.
I then receive an email with my review. 2/5 overall. 1/5 cleanliness. 1/5 for house rules. 2/5 communication.
Are you kidding me?! Here I am being nice in leaving my review on Homeaway, trying to brush aside the fact they were going to charge me $225 for laundry that the owner washed herself, after demanding us checkout by 10am and IT WAS STATED IN THE BOOKING PAGE, and then they go ahead and give me such a low rating? And then give us a 1/5 for cleanliness after the owner had said we left the house in such a clean state she just thought we didn't do the laundry because of the early checkout time? On the phone Louis Shaw was so nice and then this happens? And even it was the homeowner who left the review, it comes up as Louis Shaw of Style Vacation Homes as leaving the review. Now I have a 2/5 rating which will make it extremely hard for me to book anything on Homeaway.com in the future. So therefore, I decided to come here and leave my HONEST review of them.
So unless you want to deal with BS, don't use this company AT ALL! They are liars. read more
